Brendan Cooperhttp://brendancooper.com
Brendan Cooper is a general sort of social type content type marketing type thingy who lives in Bucks with his lovely partner, two cats, a tortoise and a 1976 Triumph Spitfire.Fri, 16 Jun 2017 04:59:13 +0000enhourly1http://wordpress.com/http://brendancooper.comhttp://thefriendlyghost.files.wordpress.com/2007/12/avatar3.jpgYour general sort of social type content type marketing type thingyFriendlyGhostCopywriterhttps://feedburner.google.comSubscribe with My Yahoo!Subscribe with NewsGatorSubscribe with My AOLSubscribe with BloglinesSubscribe with NetvibesSubscribe with GoogleSubscribe with PageflakesBrendan Cooper is a digital and social media strategist. He is friendly, and he likes to live in bubbles, be they dotcom, social media, or whatever's coming up next...Long copy brief? Short copy brief? It’s your responsibility.http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/FriendlyGhostCopywriter/~3/fDTSUNCFpLk/
http://brendancooper.com/2015/02/27/long-copy-brief-short-copy-brief-its-your-responsibility/#respondFri, 27 Feb 2015 12:32:57 +0000http://brendancooper.com/?p=8163Continue reading Long copy brief? Short copy brief? It’s your responsibility.]]>Let’s be honest: as with any service, there is uncertainty involved in copywriting, especially when it’s for a new client. It’s your job, as a copywriter, to take control and remove this.

The uncertainty is inevitable, and applies to both sides. At the client end, if they’ve never worked with you, or perhaps even with any copywriter before, then there’s naturally going to be some nervousness about taking on board a new supplier. Hopefully you’ll have been through some hoops before taking on the work – at least some emails, ideally a meeting or two – but even though your portfolio is great, and you’ve both enjoyed a coffee together, the client needs reassuring that they’re in safe, professional hands.

At your end, as a supplier, you really want to make sure you get it right first time. But by definition, the client doesn’t know as much about the copywriting process as you do – that’s why they hired you. So it’s your responsibility to guide them through it.

This is why the copy brief is so important. It’s the statement of what is needed, by when, and who has responsibility for what. As you develop your own working methods together the copy brief can become less important, but for those first few jobs together, it’s essential.

I have my own standard copy brief, which I use as a vehicle to help me guide clients through what’s needed. Sometimes I even write my own copy brief just for my own use, if I’m wrestling with a particularly thorny piece. I developed it during my time at Porter Novelli where, as half of the Writing Bureau there, I produced miles and miles of copy, almost in a production line, and this necessitated the discipline of the copy brief.

As well as the basic details around who the client is, contact details and so on, it covers several essential areas:

How many words? This is admittedly quite basic but you sometimes need to be quite militant on this one. There’s a tendency for clients to ask for ‘two or three pages’, which begs the questions around how large are the pages and how large is the font!

What is the piece about? This needs to be a succinct statement, ideally one sentence. I’ve done quite a lot of branding work and this is the equivalent of the killer question, ‘What do you do?’. Ask ten people in an organisation and you’ll get ten different answers. Same with the copy brief. Make sure someone absolutely knows what this piece is going to be about.

What is ‘the hook’? Why would people want to read this? As with branding, this is the equivalent of ‘What do you do differently’? It’s sometimes a really tough question but you both need to dig down and find a reason for the audience to want to read it. Ideas here could be that it’s a unique offering, or the first of a kind, or perhaps there’s been something big in the news that you could use as a hook. Be creative.

What are the points you want to make, and what is the proof for each point? This is where the rigour starts. You need to have ‘proof points’ for the statements that you’re going to make. These can be quantitative (5,000 holes in Blackburn, Lancashire) or qualitative, using anecdotal evidence such as news items that support your point. Certainly working in an agency I found this section incredibly useful, as I couldn’t be expected to be a subject matter expert on everyone’s account. This section made them think about what they were asking me to do, and we all ended up with better work as a result.

Where will it appear (publication name or type, email, PDF, printed newsletter)? To give an extreme example, if this is going to appear in the FT, it needs to have a completely different tone than for the Daily Mail. But even trade or vertical titles will have different requirements, so it’s important to ask where this piece is going to appear.

What effect do you want to create? This could be to drive awareness, or get more sales, or win an award. It might be less important in a copy brief but I know marketing clients like to see this, because you’re echoing to them that you know what they want from the piece.

Who is going to read it and what are their wants/needs? This is a basic question about the audience. Are they senior management who want a macro-level view across their industry? Are they junior staff who just want direct advice? Don’t forget, journalists are also audiences (and are also human, mostly).

Why now? Any tie-ins? This is similar to ‘the hook’ question but is explicitly looking for tie-ins. The point here is that the client is often the subject matter expert and they should know what’s been going on in their marketplace. So, ask them.

What is the tone of voice? This is important. It’s an expression of the client, the publication, and the audience. You need to decide whether you’re going to be authoritative, or direct, or friendly. If you’re a challenger brand you might want to be a bit pushy. If you’re a retail or consumer brand then maybe err towards the side of informality.

Is there an in-house style? This can just be a shortcut to the tone of voice, but consider that the graphic design can also be a pointer towards tone.

Do you have any examples? If so, then perhaps you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. I tend to find that previous successful examples are the key. I don’t think you can get away without asking all the other questions, but if the client can show you something they liked, and that worked, then this can get you a long way towards knowing what’s required.

Do you have any background material? Again, this is where the client needs to work hard, not just in helping with the ‘why now’ question, but with providing you with what you need. Obviously you’ll have to do your own research, but if the client can help with recent articles they’ve seen, or their own research/data/publications, this can help immensely.

Timings. This is where you become a project manager as well as copywriter. You don’t need to go crazy here. Just list the stages, responsibilities, and estimated time. The stages and responsibilities should be along the lines of first draft (copywriter), first review (client), second draft (copywriter), second review (client), final draft (copywriter), and sign-off (client).

So you see, this pretty much covers everything. There can be overlaps, for example with the ‘why now’ and ‘what’s the hook’ questions, but this brief has never let me – or my clients – down. You could maybe distil it further and create a ‘brief copy brief’ but if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!

]]>http://brendancooper.com/2015/02/27/long-copy-brief-short-copy-brief-its-your-responsibility/feed/0Brendanhttp://brendancooper.com/2015/02/27/long-copy-brief-short-copy-brief-its-your-responsibility/The #PRStack Project: Really at the intersection between PR and digitalhttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/FriendlyGhostCopywriter/~3/VvMYHURa0rg/
http://brendancooper.com/2015/02/26/the-prstack-project-really-at-the-intersection-between-pr-and-digital/#commentsThu, 26 Feb 2015 13:14:25 +0000http://brendancooper.com/?p=8158Continue reading The #PRStack Project: Really at the intersection between PR and digital]]>What are the best tools that help PR practitioners perform to the best of their ability?

This is a thought I had a few years ago. I could see that, with the advent of Web 2.0, it would help PR people to know what consumers were sharing about their clients’ products. So, I put together my first cut of the Friendly Ghost Social Media Resource – ‘Friendly Ghost’ because that was my moniker at the time (when we all felt like we were part of the matrix and thought we had to have cool names) and ‘Social Media Resource’ because I couldn’t think of anything snappier.

Reaction was mainly positive but some people expressed doubts about contributing to something when they didn’t know who was building it. Fair enough, and even though I tried making it truly crowd-sourced, by giving people the tools to share the interface, it didn’t really take off.

But if the latest CIPR report on the state of the profession is to be believed, then such a resource is clearly needed. PRs are apparently overstressed and unfairly paid, lacking in digital skills and resources. This kind of resource could help.

It clearly needed someone with much more credibility, influence and foresight to kick-start such a project. Stephen Waddington seems to have ascended into the firmament recently, popping up all over the place. A recent tweet of his caught my eye: the PR Stack, in which he invited people to contribute with their favourite tools and how they might be used.

This is great. Not only do we have a cool new tool – which is going to be a mobile app imminently (see above) – we have a community to follow. This community is, by definition, at the intersection of PR and digital, representing the core of people who have feet in both worlds but are also proactive enough to get involved. It reminds me of the good old days where Social Media Club would meet up at the ICA, or upstairs at the Coach and Horses.

And one thing I notice when I look at the contributors: they’re all individuals. I think there’s a great opportunity here for an agency to become involved, position itself right at the heart of this intersection, and be part of something exciting and new. And let’s face it, we haven’t had anything like that in social media for quite some time…

]]>http://brendancooper.com/2015/02/26/the-prstack-project-really-at-the-intersection-between-pr-and-digital/feed/5Brendanprstackhttp://brendancooper.com/2015/02/26/the-prstack-project-really-at-the-intersection-between-pr-and-digital/Paper.li – content aggregation for the easily frightenedhttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/FriendlyGhostCopywriter/~3/Ziw2EnU-IjM/
http://brendancooper.com/2015/02/25/paper-li-content-aggregation-for-the-easily-frightened/#respondWed, 25 Feb 2015 13:12:59 +0000http://brendancooper.com/?p=8149Continue reading Paper.li – content aggregation for the easily frightened]]>Content. We’re not so much waving in it, as drowning. IDC says that in 2011 we created 1.8 zettabytes (or 1.8 trillion GBs) of information. In 2012 it reached 2.8 zettabytes and IDC now forecasts that we will generate 40 zettabytes (ZB) by 2020.

Of course, that’s not all human-readable data but I’ve been looking around for those kind of figures and it seems we’ve given up on calculating the size of the blogosphere, Twitterverse or any other social media-verse-osphere in any meaningful way.

So let’s forget about quantifying data. How do you feeeeeeeeel about it?

Personally, I feel overwhelmed a lot of the time. Google Reader was great for grabbing a ton of feeds and filtering the wheat from the chaff. It closed. Yahoo Pipes does something similar but has a steep learning curve and is a bit flaky.

But it’s still all a bit, well, panic-inducing. I dip into TweetDeck and have a nibble but hop away quite quickly again like a tiny frightened rabbit. Feed.ly, while more relaxing, can also scare the faint of heart, especially with its title-only layout. There are magazine-type apps such as Flipboard, which recently expanded into the web(osphere) and Google Newsstand. This seemed a way forward, by presenting items in a neat, concise layout but try as I might, I never really managed to get them quite how I wanted them.

At its simplest and most effective, you just plug your Twitter feed into it, which creates a publication based on the most shared content, that was shared by the most influential people. So it’s almost a Twitter ‘expander’, taking the most relevant tweets and expanding them back into full articles. You can go much deeper into different sources of content, filters, customisation and so on, but at the basic level it works marvellously well.

However, forget about sharing for a second. My publication is actually really useful to me. This is because it represents something of an amazing intersection between the people I want to follow, and the content I want to read.

What I really like about this approach is that I get an email in my inbox each morning telling me that the new edition’s ready. I go and take a look, and there it is: my magazine, with the most interesting articles that I really need to read. Not columns of content or masses of titles. Just the top, say, four or five articles distilled for my pleasure.

So forget about building feeds or creating lists, or scanning vast swathes of information rolling in front of your eyes like so many fruit machines. Just start up a Paper.li publication, plug your Twitter timeline into it, tweak it a little with filters, and away you go. If it’s not quite right, tweak it again a few more times and you’ll soon have your own, simple, relevant daily digest.

I think the next radical step in Paper.li’s evolution is going to be some sort of unique delivery system. I see a great opportunity to offer the magazine in, say, a PDF format so that people can print a hard copy. Or, how about this: a centralised printing facility that not only prints but delivers, maybe via third-party agents that specialise in news, with franchises based in local communities offering a valuable source of local employment. It might catch on…

]]>http://brendancooper.com/2015/02/25/paper-li-content-aggregation-for-the-easily-frightened/feed/0paperliBrendanhttp://brendancooper.com/2015/02/25/paper-li-content-aggregation-for-the-easily-frightened/From search to site through what you sayhttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/FriendlyGhostCopywriter/~3/0pmUH1JhKVc/
http://brendancooper.com/2015/02/17/from-search-to-site-through-what-you-say/#respondTue, 17 Feb 2015 19:13:32 +0000http://brendancooper.com/?p=8118Continue reading From search to site through what you say]]>So I’m getting back into RSS browsing. I dropped it when Google Reader died, thinking that Twitter was really the only game in town for monitoring. But there’s a difference. Twitter is really, really fast and for that reason, I tend to use it for quickly getting an idea of what’s going on. I might retweet or favourite but honestly, do I read much of what flashes by? Not really.

It’s nice getting into RSS again, building up my feeds, this time in Feedly. Feedly’s pretty good with a nice interface but still doesn’t have keyword filters. Not to worry. I liken it to sitting down with a trade magazine and spending time going through what really matters. Flipboard and Google Newsstand are good, but you really do build your own Feedly from the bottom up.

He then discusses attention, attraction, delivery, response. This is yet another variant of the marketing funnel (awareness, interest, desire, action) which I’ve used many times to illustrate content strategy.

Some people think the marketing funnel is dead. Others think it’s well and truly alive. Then again some people think PR is dead, while others think it’s thriving. Still others think Elvis is dead, the poor deluded fools.

I don’t think you can prove it either way but what I do believe is that it’s a great way to formalise your knowledge. I’m a fan of structured thinking, mainly because I find it hard. If it’s hard, it’s usually worthwhile and then, when you get the hang of it, the other stuff becomes easier.

So, looking at content through this structure you start to see that awareness is really about going to where other people live, so that you interact with them on their home turf. They’re not going to come to yours until/unless they’re aware of you. So awareness is about earned content, and you measure it by the amount of conversation you’re having with people out there. You make this work for you by identifying influencers in key topic areas and building structures through Twitter lists, Feedly lists and so on, making sure you interact with the people that matter.

Interest, then, is when people are curious enough about you to come and pay you a visit. Have a nice sit down and a cup of tea. Maybe a scone or two (yes, I’m British, it shows). This is where your owned channels are important, and you measure this by engagement. If you’ve made the right noises abroad, about the right topics, to the right people, then, when they come to you, if you continue to make the right noises, they might just shortlist you.

What of desire and action? Well, my take on this is that they’re really where your website works hardest. Visitors have surfed through the stratosphere of awareness and the atmosphere of awareness, and now they’ve landed on Planet You. This is your chance to validate their suspicion that you’re the person/team/agency/company for them, and where your case studies, awards and recommendations come into play. And action is really about conversion, so make it as easy as possible for them to get in touch.

Some people reckon the marketing funnel is circular now, with ‘retention’ feeding back from the bottom to the top, like the self-consuming serpent. I see that as a by-product of everything else you do, with maybe some specialist activities such as newsletters so they feel part of the club.

To get back to Mr Antcliff’s point, if you really want to make your content work hard to pull people from search to site, you need to think about publishing. And this is why you need to think about how your content can work for you. I remember in my early days I told people that really, I was a publisher. This blog is a publication. And as we all know, everyone is a publisher now.

Anyway, go and read his post on Econsultancy. He has, I think, a different take on the funnel but it’s broadly similar. Well worth a read.

]]>http://brendancooper.com/2015/02/17/from-search-to-site-through-what-you-say/feed/0Brendanhttp://brendancooper.com/2015/02/17/from-search-to-site-through-what-you-say/Whoops there goes another Bitcoinhttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/FriendlyGhostCopywriter/~3/PU77-KknnUA/
http://brendancooper.com/2015/02/16/whoops-there-goes-another-bitcoin/#respondMon, 16 Feb 2015 09:42:17 +0000http://brendancooper.com/?p=8113]]>Confidence. It’s what makes the world go around. Money too, as the song goes, but that’s pretty much an index of confidence. Watch the stocks plummet and you can be sure there’s lack of confidence there, or even the presence of panic. See the indexes climb and there will be some pretty confident people behind them. It’s certainly not love. Don’t you just wish the financial markets would hire more confident, less panicky, more loveable people?

Bitcoin is a currency that exists outside of centralised government control, with a limited number of Bitcoins in existence. New Bitcoins come about by solving tough computational problems. The more computation thrown at the problem, the tougher the problems get. It is decentralised and self-balancing. The problem is, it doesn’t seem to work.

As a virtual currency it brings into sharp relief the idea that money doesn’t really exist. The money I have sequestered in bank accounts isn’t really there. It’s just ones and zeroes. Not even that – it’s actually just some magnetic impulses on a storage device somewhere. (No wonder some people still keep their money under a mattress).

The difference between Bitcoin and ‘real’ money is that ‘real’ money – even if it’s just magnetic polarisation – is backed up by the government. If a huge sunspot were to wipe all our hard drives tomorrow then hopefully the banks will have contingency plans, such as back-up centres behind lead-lined vaults buried miles beneath mountain ranges.

But virtual currency holds no such backup, by definition. OK, so the trace of payments is distributed across all peers, but as we’re finding out, rapidly, this is no protection against hacking, it would seem. Online wallets are insecure. Offline wallets can wind up in the local recycling facility. Entire exchanges go ‘pop!’, like balloons.

So another hack, another knock to the confidence of what was once supposed to be a brave new world of currency exchange. Strange isn’t it how these brave new worlds can turn so sour? Remember how the web was supposed to facilitate creative freedom? Or how social media was going to give everyone a voice? I pretty much gave up blogging because I realised my voice was being drowned out by the noise, so I had to come up for air. I’ve only started again because I need to exercise my writing muscles once in a while.

What now for Bitcoin? Let’s take it from Gavin Andresen, chief scientist at the Bitcoin Foundation, the closest thing to a central bank for the nascent cryptocurrency: his opinion is that Bitcoin is dangerous and people should steer away from using it. That’s one of the most important figures in Bitcoin as reported by the highly credible FT. So, that gives me confidence. Don’t even approach the glass. For now.

Actually, I tell a lie. I once lost ALL my data. I was recklessly drinking some Becks beer while doing some file management and somehow managed to delete everything from a drive that didn’t have the trash can activated. Thirty rather desperate (and suddenly sober) minutes later, I’d downloaded a good undelete utility and recovered it all. Phew.

Apart from that however, I’ve been something of a back-up freak over the years. It started when I got into home music production. All those hours of recording, arranging, mixing… to lose it all would have been devastating. This brings into sharp relief what we mean about the value of data. Sure, it has business value when you make it work for you. But it can also have immense personal value.

But as our data grows, and becomes more sensitive, backing up becomes more onerous. You forget. You can’t be bothered. You get out of the habit. You need a 1TB hard drive to back up a 1TB hard drive. You need secure, off-site storage – and when you’re working freelance from home, you might not have ready access to a nice, locked drawer somewhere else. And the more human intervention comes in, the more likely you are to screw it up. One day you will back up the wrong way, from the backup to the live. Or, your backup drive will corrupt and you’ll only find out when you really need it. I shudder to think…

Enter cloud storage. Now, I can just hear the stifled laughter. You’re thinking “Why is Brendan talking about cloud storage so late in the day? It’s been around for ages.” This is true enough and I suppose I’m a relatively late convert. But you never know, someone might be looking around for opinions on this, and if they find mine, then I’m telling them: go for it. In fact, if you’re looking around for opinions on this, and you just found me, then I’m telling you: go for it.

Cloud storage is brilliant. I never realised how brilliant until I really started using it. Now, whenever I save a file, and that cute little icon on the systray spins around, I know that I’ll never lose it, that in fact I can go back to a previous version if I need to, and that I can access it from any of my machines, anywhere in the world (mostly). And I don’t have to do a single thing. In fact, I don’t even have to spend one Bitcoin on it. It’s free. This is absurdly amazing. If it didn’t exist, someone would have to invent it. Which they already have, of course.

But cloud storage also opens up creative possibilities. For example, I’ve developed my own social media monitoring system, called ‘Bob’ until I think of a better name (although I’m starting to like it). Bob downloads data, aggregates it, cleans it, and then presents it in ways that I – and my clients – find useful. Where does Bob download the data? To cloud storage, of course. This means that I can query Bob at home, or in the client offices. It doesn’t matter. It’s entirely transparent to Bob. If I ever licensed Bob, I could have clients each with their own private cloud storage, all feeding data into their version of Bob. Marvellous.

Another possibility: your own personal music library. If you can get enough storage (or don’t have too many songs), then just port it all across to a cloud drive and you can access that from any machine, anywhere, and you’ll never need to back it up again.

Cloud storage is also a hugely useful facilitator for collaboration. I run the social media and programme editorial for the Kop Hill Climb, now a major international automotive event in Princes Risborough, Bucks. The entire organisational crew, comprising well over 20 people, uses cloud storage to share and store files. And, as Kop Hill Climb is a charity, generating around £50,000 each year to local causes, the fact that this storage is free is a welcome bonus.

But if you really want to know, this is how I’m using it (note that I’m using several services because that means I get them for free within their storage limits because I’m a cheapskate):

Microsoft OneDrive – for my personal work. I use this simply because it’s baked into my Windows 8 installation. It seems a bit slow to upload but apart from that it chugs away nicely in the background.

Dropbox – for Kop Hill, and for one client, because they both use it. I find Dropbox rock-solid, but it doesn’t cope with concurrency very well (that is, when two people are accessing the same file). This can result in lost work or duplicate files, so watch out for that.

Google Drive – for another client, again simply because they use it. Honestly? Don’t touch it with a barge pole. I’ve had serious issues with Google Drive not syncing, resulting in lost productivity trying to figure out what the latest versions of files are. Really. Don’t go there. Unless something radical has changed, this is, in my opinion and experience, not fit for purpose. Sorry Google.

Mega – to store all my music, because you get a wopping 50GB free. OK, so it’s run by Kim Dotcom. OK, so he’s a controversial figure to some. But in a strange way I trust him more than I trust the likes of Google and Microsoft. At least there is a spotlight on him. And it just works.

I’ve also dabbled with Amazon Cloud but I found that a bit clunky. Just my own take on it.

There are other services too, so check them out as per that article. This just works for me. Between them, OneDrive and Mega ensure that when I save stuff, it remains saved. And, so long as I have strong passwords that I change, it remains safe too. Meanwhile Dropbox and Google Drive enable me to work with other people, albeit with more than a little frustration from Google Drive.

]]>http://brendancooper.com/2015/02/07/gotta-love-cloud-storage/feed/0Brendanhttp://brendancooper.com/2015/02/07/gotta-love-cloud-storage/What’s in a name? Everything.http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/FriendlyGhostCopywriter/~3/7mJNalagYIc/
http://brendancooper.com/2014/12/08/whats-in-a-name-everything/#respondMon, 08 Dec 2014 16:19:46 +0000http://brendancooper.com/?p=8050Continue reading What’s in a name? Everything.]]>I couldn’t quite believe my eyes. A couple of days ago, a PR agency was being castigated for calling itself ‘Strange Fruit PR’. I knew the name was familiar but couldn’t quite pinpoint it. Was it something to do with ‘Oranges Aren’t The Only Fruit’? In what way was that controversial? Then I realised. Oh dear. Oh dearie dearie me. Oh dearie dearie dearie dearie me.

There was a link to the Twitter account. It didn’t exist. So I looked for the website. That had been taken down. So I took it as one of those strange warps in the fabric of spacetime that you occasionally glimpse, shrug your shoulders, and move on.

This is quite a brazen example of really getting branding very badly wrong, but the closer you look, the more difficult branding gets. It’s not just a name or a logo. It has to be something that differentiates you from your competitors, makes you relevant to your audiences, and works internally, now and in the future. It’s a tough nut to crack and I’ve had several goes at it in my time, using the seat-of-the-pants method (ie making it up), going through agencies (ie doing it properly) and bringing it all together for my direct clients.

So branding is deep and wide: deep in that it gets to the heart of what a company is about; and wide because it affects everything that company does. However, the public face of a brand is its name, strapline and logo. So when I was thinking about Strange Fruit – when I’d got over the shock of how completely dumb they must be, that is – I got to thinking about other examples down the ages. Here are some:

Consignia. It was called Royal Mail. Then it was called Consignia. Then, after a backlash, it became Royal Mail again. The idea behind the new name was to have a brand that encompassed more than just ‘mail’. This made sense, because the brand has to reflect what the company does. I daresay the word ‘Royal’ also seemed old and out of touch. However, people just didn’t like the new name. It smacked of an awful portmanteau, that is, a word fused from other words, in this case ‘consign’ and ‘insignia’. Whereas Royal Mail had weight and authority, Consignia seemed a bit, well, plasticky.

Abbey. This relaunched Abbey National with the promise of ‘turning banking on its head’. This line is nonsense. What does it mean? Credits become debits? The bank gives us money which we invest and then give back to them? It became an object lesson in how to mismanage a rebrand and seriously damaged the business. Mark Ritson gives a great breakdown of this breakdown. Talking of poor straplines as opposed to names, there’s also Mellow Birds, a coffee brand that promised it will ‘make you smile’. What on earth has that got to do with coffee? So does my cat.

New Coke. There’s a problem with putting ‘new’ in front of anything. Sooner or later, it’s going to become old. Then, where do you go? So it was with New Labour, so it was with New Coke. Actually they did pretty much everything right, with consumer tests apparently proving that the new taste was better. Then the backlash came, and remember this was well before any social media existed, or even online communications of any significant type. Coke switched back to Classic Coke and continued to outsell its competitor. So perhaps this goes to show, sometimes you can follow the right path but make sure you’re agile enough to switch.

These are all mistakes that, when you examine them more closely, were made honestly. Portmanteau names can work, in the same way nonsense words work, especially in crowded markets where you have little choice (Google, Yahoo). You just build the brand around the name and it becomes synonymous with its values. Straplines aren’t even necessary much of the time, but the management of the rebrand needs to be tight. And New Coke got it right, then got it wrong, then got it right again.

]]>http://brendancooper.com/2014/12/08/whats-in-a-name-everything/feed/0Brendanhttp://brendancooper.com/2014/12/08/whats-in-a-name-everything/Nail your content strategy with the marketing funnelhttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/FriendlyGhostCopywriter/~3/aM9t2sRa8NE/
http://brendancooper.com/2014/12/02/and-that-my-liege-is-how-we-know-the-marketing-funnel-to-be-banana-shaped/#respondTue, 02 Dec 2014 20:03:41 +0000http://brendancooper.com/?p=8035Continue reading Nail your content strategy with the marketing funnel]]>There are many takes on the marketing funnel. They go from simple – Awareness, Interest, Desire, Action, the classic AIDA model – to very complicated. Some people swear by them. Others swear at them. Still others think the funnel is actually banana-shaped. Not really, I just couldn’t resist putting that in.

The idea is that people move from not knowing about you, on a journey that gets closer to investing in you. After becoming aware, if they like what they see then they’re interested. If they’re interested enough, they put you on a shortlist. And if you’re still a candidate, they’ll act – whether actually buying, or just getting in touch.

I quite like it because it makes sense to me and I use that as a litmus test. If I understand it, then my clients probably will too. I like the simplest version, the AIDA model, but I like putting something underneath the funnel for digital marketing in particular: retention.

I also like the funnel because it enables me to do two important things: figure out which kinds of content work for each stage of the funnel; and measure effectiveness.

Awareness, Interest, Desire, Action, Retention. What on earth am I talking about? Read on and, if you disagree, let me know below. No, really, I want to be told I’m wrong because that’s how I learn…

Awareness: I’m looking for X

This is where you need to move from people not knowing about you, to people becoming aware of you. They will be looking for something and will use fairly generic, industry- or sector-wide terms to do this, such as mousetraps, washing machines, digital marketing.

This is mostly the domain of Google. Sure, there are other search engines, but Google is it. So to make sure you’re top of Google, you need to embark on an awareness programme.

My feeling on awareness? Don’t use social media for it. There is no proven link between social and SEO, with the sole exception of Google+ which is plugged into Google’s results. So when people say they want to use social media to raise awareness, they’re using the wrong tool.

Awareness is all about what happens away from your site. You need to spread your tentacles across the web and make sure people are as likely to find you as possible using those generic search terms. So, for awareness, you need to think about getting as much word-of-mouth out there as possible. This is where PR comes in, with placed articles, bylines and advertorials raising awareness offline.

For online awareness, you need to think about establishing a presence on sites other than your own. Here are some ways to do this:

Blogs – Comment on influencers who mention you, our your issues, or any of your content. Also consider blog exchange programmes, where you post on influencer blog and they post on yours

Twitter: Retweet influencers who mention you

LinkedIn: Interact with industry groups

Facebook: Like or comment on pages that mention you

Everything here is designed to establish your voice on third-party sites. In other words, to raise awareness.

How do you measure this? Well given that most of this is off-site activity, you’re looking at how much earned conversation you’re stimulating, that is, how much are people talking about you other than yourself. There are ways of doing this, mainly by building dashboards through APIs.

You can also look at your Google Analytics and see how much search engine traffic is coming to your site. This gives you an idea of how successful your content strategy is in grabbing Google’s attention.

Interest: I’ve heard about you and I’d like to know more

So people know about you, because you’ve raised awareness through PR and canny use of third-party sites. Now it’s time to stimulate their interest and this is really where you can start using your social media. Think about how each of your channels can work with each of these types of content:

Events – are bread and butter to social media. Blog before, during and after them. Use Twitter, Instagram and Vine during them. Put your video together for more in-depth coverage on YouTube during and after. There’s plenty you can be doing with events that will make people think you’ve got your finger on the pulse.

White papers – are something of a dreadnought of communications, but this content can be great for ‘slicing and dicing’, that is, releasing a small amount at a time, linking to a dedicated web page or microsite. Go one step further and ask for people’s email addresses in return for this premium content and you’re right into the retention level.

Press releases – should always be on your Twitter feed and LinkedIn company page at the very least. Consider repackaging them for the blog but remember that your blog should on the whole talk about industry issues rather than shouting about yourself.

Educational series – are where you show that you know what you’re talking about, so talk about it on your blog. Even if you think something’s obvious, other people won’t.

To measure this, you’re now looking at how engaged people are with your owned channels. How often do people retweet you? How many comments does your YouTube channel have? How many people are talking about your Facebook page? And so on.

Again, Google Analytics is important. If you’re hosting in-depth content with serious amounts of investment behind them such as white papers, then you need to know how many people are visiting those pages, and how many are downloading them.

You can also use the dedicated dashboards for each channel but I’m not a fan of them. I like metrics that I can compare across channels and competitors, such as reach and engagement.

Desire: You’re on my shortlist

Having gone from awareness out there on the wild web, to interest from what you’re saying, the customer journey is now about desire. They know about you and they like you, and you’re on their shorlist. Now it’s your job to validate their decision to opt for you.

There are three kinds of content that work really well for this:

Case studies – are absolutely what you need to convince people that you know what you’re talking about. Prove to them that you understood the challenge, employed the right tactics, and got results.

Third-party articles – by which I mean all mentions of you whether bylines, features, blog posts or news. People want to know that you’re being talked about.

Awards – as with the funnel itself, some people love them and others hate them. I think they’re very compelling. Whatever the politics behind them (ie a stunning correlation between the companies that win and the companies that pay sponsorship), I think most people regard them as strong endorsement from the industry.

There’s a fourth kind here which can be controversial: comparison tables. They might work well for FMCG brands – “Hey look, you can wipe your bum much more quickly with our Bum-away toilet roll” – but sometimes slagging your competitors off can reflect poorly on your shiny brands.

To measure this you’re looking at metrics such as specific engagement from known influencers – retweets, replies, comments, subscribers. On your site you should also look for downloads of content and visits to pages that host it.

Action: Where do I sign?

This is It. There’s very little you can do with social media here. People have gone from the outer space of non-awareness, to the atmosphere of interest, and have landed on your planet because they have desire. But you can’t make them sign the dotted line. The best you can do here is make sure you have plenty of calls to action. Make it as easy as possible for people to buy, or to call you, email you, get in touch in any way. Marketing’s job is to get people as far down the funnel as Action. From now on, it’s about converting, and this is where marketing hands over to sales.

For measurement, this is absolutely the domain of the website. You should monitor specific page accesses to ‘hot’ conversion pages such as Contact Us or registration pages. And, of course, if you’re selling directly via your site, you need to monitor conversion rates: how many people pressed the Buy button?

Retention: Welcome to the club

Now you’ve got people on board, it’s time to keep them there. Sure, you’ve got your social media channels chugging away happily but everyone can read them. For people who have invested in you, give some of that investment back. This is where you embark on a client comms programme, giving them the inside track on product development, special offers, invites to events and so on. And to measure this, look at the metrics your email system supports such as numbers of emails opened or unsubscription rates.

And that’s it. That’s my take on the funnel, how to match content to each stage, and how to measure each stage. Please tell me that you disagree below, because I like finding stuff out from smart people.

Quadrants. Marketers love ’em. Actually, I like them too. I like the way you can draw two axes and plot things on them, and get an instant idea of often quite complex issues.

I’ve been using this approach quite a lot recently to plot social media. There are many, many things you can measure once you start grabbing data. For example the Facebook insights dashboard is very rich, plus you can download the data and do your own analyses. The Twitter analytics are good too. However, if you really want to know what’s working you need to measure across channels, and across competitors. Measuring across channels means that you need to use metrics that work across all of them, to compare like for like. And measuring across competitors means you need metrics that are publicly, consistently, readily available.

So what to measure then?

Well, as I’ve already said, there’s plenty you can measure but that doesn’t fall into these categories. The most important measurements are obviously what you have decided your business needs to look at, which might be extremely specific such as reduced time to market, improved support outcomes and so on. But a good start is audience size and engagement.

Do this: identify a handful of competitors, and in a spreadsheet note down how many Facebook likes they have, and what their ‘Talking about this’ total is. Then go into Excel and plot them in a scatter chart. You can do this either way, with likes going across and ‘talking about this’ going up, or vice versa. What’s important is that you now see where you lie in relation to the competitors, just for Facebook. Your objective is to move across and up. In three months do the same exercise and you’ll see whether you’ve succeeded.

This is very basic, and I can just hear some of you out there wincing at the idea of reducing social media down to this. But sometimes you do need to distill to key metrics, not least for internal reports. Time-pressured CEOs might not want breakdowns of every possible metric. If they can just say a chart that shows you’re moving across and up, that might be enough.

Across channels, across competitors

So that’s just Facebook. Now think about plotting the other owned channels, and how audience size and engagement might be measured. For example, Twitter audience size is followers, and engagement is retweets or replies (hint: use Topsy to count these). YouTube audience size is subscribers, while engagement is channel comments. And so on. Note again that these all must be what works across all channels, and is readily, consistently, quickly available. I agree that view count might be attractive on YouTube, or loop count is impressive on Vine, but there’s no equivalent of these on, say, Facebook. You could go through individual comments for each video on YouTube, but that would take ages. And you could look at the number of views your blog gets, but you can’t for your competitors.

Three-dimensional analysis

Now you’re looking across your owned channels, and comparing them to competitors, and that’s a good start. But if you’re getting into pulling data via APIs and suchlike, you can also draw more insight and add more dimensions. For example, if you’re pulling in user data, you can identify the number of unique commentators. Change your scatter chart to a bubble chart, and now your audience size can be across, your engagement can be up, and the size of the bubble can be the number of unique commentators.

Or, if your data includes sentiment analysis, you can use that in some way. A nice way to show this could be to have engagement going across, sentiment going up, and the bubble size representing audience size. But be careful: automated sentiment can go wrong. That’s why I tend to ignore it, and just deal with the other three axes.

Can you beyond three dimensions?

Can we have four dimensions? Audience size, engagement, unique commentators and sentiment? Unfortunately not it would seem. It would be great to have a sliding scale of colour intensity for the bubbles but I don’t think Excel does this. If it does, please let me know! Also, it could just be a bit too complicated.

What about time? That’s another dimension, right? This can get quite interesting when you plot over time. You can do this in Excel using macros to go through the data but it can get very complicated and slow, plus your data has to be in exactly the right format for the macro to work. So I’ve been using a Windows macro recorder such as JitBit to update the date in a spreadsheet, grab the resulting chart, paste it into Photoshop in a new layer, and build it up that way. Then export as an animated GIF and you can start seeing the ebb and flow of how your owned channels are behaving. It’s a bit like watching one of those cool time-lapse videos of clouds scudding across the sky or flowers growing, blossoming, and dying within seconds.

This is what you can see at the top of this post. It’s from work I did quite a while ago and I think it’s old enough to share publicly now. You can see how the bubbles move around and I can tell you now that they do correspond to marketing activity. This actually goes beyond just charting using owned channels and in fact takes all mentions across all channels, so giving us an idea of where we lie in the marketplace of conversation.

In this instance I was able to show that the work I did had an impact, at least within just the social media-sphere. I’ve since used similar methods to prove similar effectiveness and actually secured more funding for social media initiatives. If nothing else, this shows that data analysis can lead to ROI. Now, let’s see if we can plot that…